Thomas Jungbauer

Assistant Professor of Economics

Professor Jungbauer applies economic theory to study welfare implications of allocation mechanisms like auctions or platforms in two-sided economies with prices. While his research primarily focuses on high-skill labor markets, his analyses extend to questions of industrial organization and entrepreneurship.

In his work Professor Jungbauer shows that firms might lack incentives to remunerate heterogeneous workers differently if the relevant labor market is sufficiently small and dominated by strategic behavior of firms and workers. Currently he analyzes the effects of worker (input) complementarity and the hiring (acquisition) timeline on market efficiency and surplus distribution as well as the effects of technological change in a market characterized by heterogeneous consumer preferences.

While his work in market design first and foremost concerns specialist labor markets, he is similarly interested in other bilateral coordination problems with and without prices. Important examples are more sizeable labor markets, marriage and adoption markets, donor organ allocation or the matching of customers with airline seats. His previous work in economic theory critically reviews the literature of games under fundamental uncertainty and suggests an alternative benchmark approach mirroring the concept of rationalizable strategies under risk. In another project, related to learning and social networks, he underlines the significance of temporal flexibility of contribution schemes in public goods provision when agents aspire towards matching their peers’ welfare levels.

Professor Jungbauer taught sessions for various classes in Economics, Statistics and Strategy at the undergraduate, graduate, MBA and executive level during his graduate studies at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Currently he teaches the Business Strategy MBA core module at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University.

He received his Ph.D. in Managerial Economics and Strategy from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He also holds Master’s degrees in Managerial Economics from Northwestern University and in Economics from the Vienna Institute of Advanced Studies (IHS).